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1. We don’t experience the world directly but indirectly, through sensing and thinking.

2. Our experiences are not determined by events but by how we interpret events, what we believe about them.

3. Beliefs are patterns of thinking we believe to be true, accurate representations, but they always include some interpretation since we do not experience the world directly.

4. We think by first representing things subjectively in terms of our senses: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and to a lesser extent olfactory and gustatory.

5. Our habitual representations occur spontaneously and are maintained without effort (whether problematic or useful), often without conscious awareness, but can be made conscious and deliberately adjusted.

6. Our visual, auditory, and kinesthetic representations include both the content or facts about the situation as well as the stylistic elements or process (“submodalities”), the latter which are relatively arbitrary and largely determine our emotional responses.

7. The process elements (“submodalities”) of our representations are easily changed with just a few minutes of practice by using our imagination to represent the same things in a different way, whereas trying to stop the thought or change the content is difficult or even backfires (ironic process theory).

8. We can therefore change our experiences by changing our beliefs, and we can change our beliefs by changing the process elements of our representations, where the change is automatic and ongoing with just a very brief intervention.

9. There are more or less wise and effective ways to make submodality changes. Wise and effective approaches seek congruence, appropriate fit for the context, account for side-effects (“ecology”), are non-aggressive, utilize existing structures, and retain all information rather than deleting information.

This is the NLP Submodality Change Work Model. Steve Andreas (whom I work for) is probably the #1 proponent of this model, but he may or may not agree with how I stated it here. I use this model frequently in my work with clients.

This model may or may not be “true,” but it is profoundly useful. It is not the only useful model for change work. Some other models have completely different, even contrary principles. But with this model anyone can learn to make powerful life changes in a very short period of time.

If this was unintelligible, let me know. I’ve been steeped in this stuff for over a decade and this was my attempt at making it clear and concise. I’ll also be explaining in more detail over the coming weeks so stay tuned.

Thanks for reading,
~Duff

p.s. This is a 2-way street. Feel free to add a comment below and let me know what you thought of this article. Also, make sure to subscribe for updates in the upper right of the screen.

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Beyond Growth is an online resource for learning about how to do effective change work, for thinking deeply about how to live a good life, and for how we might leave the world a little better than we found it.